Spanning 88.4m, weighing 600t on tahe-off, carrying 250t internally or externally, the Antonov An-225 Mriya ("Dream") is the v/orld's largest aircraft
The Soviet Union has sound eco
nomic reasons for building the
world's largest transport aircraft,
as senior aircraft constructor AS
Vovnyenko reveals in this detailed
description* of the genesis, design
and construction of the Antonov
An-225 Mriya translated by Harry
Hopkins
In 1981, the centre-section and outer wing panels for the first Antonov An-124 Ruslan—soon to be the world's largest aircraft, if only briefly—had to
be moved from Tashkent to Kiev. For the first
time in the Soviet Union, the load was
mounted externally; above the fuselage of the
first An-22 Anteus, the world's largest aircraft
when it flew 23 years earlier.
Later the Soviets modified a Myasishchev
Mya-4 four-jet bomber to carry major exter
nal parts of the Energia heavy-lift booster and
the airframe of the Buran space shuttle. The
resulting VM-T transport, able to carry a 50t
external load over 1,500km, was first seen
at the Tushino Airshow in Moscow earlier
this year.
The weight, size and nature of payloads
able to be carried externally by the modified
An-22 and Mya-4 were limited, however, and
the Soviets decided to produce a purpose-
August issue of Grazhdanskaya Aviatsiya
designed aircraft to carry outsize payloads.
Ironically, the Antonov design bureau had
to call upon an existing outsize transporter in
December. 1987 to deliver the 40t centre-
section of the first An-225.
The aircraft was designed and built in just
3i years by drawing heavily on the existing
An-124 airframe, engines and systems. The
An-225 flew for the first time on 21 Decem
ber, 1988. On 22 March this year, after 43
flights and 63h in the air, the An-225 estab
lished itself as the world's heaviest aircraft,
taking off from Kiev at 508t, with a 156.3t
payload, and reaching 12,410m (more than
40,000ft) on the 3h 45min flight to
Leningrad.
In designing the An-225, the main problem
to be overcome was aerodynamic interfer
ence between the aircraft and its external
load. Tests indicated that, for stability, a load
whose diameter would equal or exceed that
of the fuselage had to be placed near the tail.
To mount longer loads, the Ah-124's single
fin had to be replaced by two surfaces,
introducing stability and control problems
Antonov had overcome earlier on the An-22.
The thick, supercritical-section wide-span
wing achieves a lift:drag ratio of 19, claims
Antonov, attributed in part to the relatively
aft CG and attention to local airflow and
surface finish. The 21.6m-span, 2.4m-deep
centre-section, which carries the two inboard
The modified Myasishchev Mya-4, VM-T, is a first attempt at an outsize cargo transporter
34 FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL 29 November-5 December 1989